Engine tech demos give us a glimpse at what's to come in the world of video game visuals. We've already seen several examples, with Unreal Engine 5 being a prime example with its amazing ancient city and that playable Matrix demo. However, Unity has been in on the action too; in March it released its Enemies teaser, showcasing great character model fidelity. Now, it's back with a short but equally impressive clip featuring a lion and his cub.
Shown in real-time, the demo, simply called Lion, is a collaboration of art and design tools to produce a photorealistic scene. We see the cub playing with its father (serious The Lion King flashbacks) in the African plains, and the level of detail in the fur and the adult's mane is very convincing. What's more, the demo is running on a PS5 at 4K and 30 frames-per-second, as stated in this accompanying blog post.
There's a lot of technical info on that page if you're interested, but the key takeaway for most will be that there's still plenty of room to grow when it comes to real-time graphics. It'll probably be a while before we see games employing these techniques regularly, but it's a neat tease of what to expect going forward.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 20
Yeah, but nothing is as impressive as that PS1 T-Rex to my 13 yo mind.
Colour me impressed. You weren't lion, that looks brilliant, as far as tech demo's are concerned. We truly have a hell of a lot to look forward too, games wise, judging by this demo. PS5 games will be so amazing in say 3 - 5 years from now. Absolutely brilliant!
@thefourfoldroot1 I love the throwback in the astro bot game when you beat him as a boss, epic 👍👍😁
It's pretty, sure, but how buggy is this version going to be? I love how easy it is to get going with Unity but it has never been as a stable or extendable as Unreal, and once you've written everything in C# it's hard to port to another engine so you're locked in.
It's a tech demo, with everything poured into this small moment.
A full game using the same tech simply won't have the man hours to make it as equally impressive. It'll look good, sure, but it won't be the same. It just won't.
Looks awesome, sure.
But I feel kinda sad than many games nowadays try to reach the most realistic look possible, but completely forget about art-style in general. That's OK for different action games like Arma, COD, Battlefield and so on (no offence though). But think about first Fable games, Sea of Thieves, World of Warcraft and some others - they look so damn good even without adding an insane amount of polygons and 98K textures of clouds and fur.
Over the decades we get all these amazing demos and they never get in game that good for that current generation. Just imagine the development time in a full game and the GB game file size 😂
Looks impressive but at the same time doesn't. Almost everything looks a little blurred and out of focus almost like a game made in Dreams. Odd creative choice IMO.
But glad these tech demos are now running on current gen hardware as opposed to top end PC's, me might actually see graphics like this with the generation, whereas before it was a bit of a pipe dream.
Afrika 2 when?
@get2sammyb when Lynx deodorant announce their Christmas 2022 gift collections
Unfortunately Unity have now merged with a malware company and so I’m staying the hell away from them.
New Lion King game please!
Looks nice.
As with all of these demos; the systems will be able to do this in a game in maybe 2-4 more generations and PC maybe 5 years.
Here's an old UE3 demo: https://youtu.be/RSXyztq_0uM and we're just now getting to looking close to this.
Demos are nifty but no different than pre-rendered videos imo.
Could be doable in a game one day. I remember the Kara tech demo from Quantic Dreams on PS3 being impressive at the time and then Detroit on PS4 blew it out of the water.
Pun Awards
... Not!
With tech like this, Unity might be the MANE engine developers use! Ha!
Unity-built Games so far have kind of disappointed me tech-wise. This tech demo won’t make me trust this engine.
Can’t wait till these consoles start having their capabilities really exploited. The Matrix demo was a good hint at what we should expect this gen. Graphics are finally going to start hitting that ‘photo realism’ we fooled our brains into thinking Goldeneye hit back on the N64.
What I’m really looking forward to seeing though is the generational leap in AI and animation. As well as seeing what else new gameplay wise this gen can offer… what new genre of game it will lead to - probably something incorporating the cloud.
Yes looks amazing, but seen nothing on PS5 yet that really screams next gen. And that's because of cross gen ps4/ps5 support more than anything. Hopefully soon true next gen ps5 games won't be possible on ps4.
@huyi I never made it to the T-Rex in Tomb Raider, but still enjoyed that secret boss battle in Astro Bot!
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